Postmaster Robert Pafford of Salina, Kans. (pop. 30,000) had almost forgotten about the crate of eight Federal Works Administration mural panels stored away in his post-office basement since 1942. Bob Pafford and other Salina citizens had never even taken the trouble to look at the actual panels, but they had seen the photos of the work and that was enough. To Postmaster Pafford & friends they seemed like ugly daubs. When the crate arrived, Pafford announced that the post office was just too busy with hordes of war workers to be bothered putting up murals. He packed them off to the cellar, and the Post Office Department backed him up in his decision to keep them there.
Seven years later, Artists Equity (sparked by Manhattan Muralist Harold Black, who with his ex-wife Isabel Bate had painted the panels) wrote to Washington: the time had come when the murals should be installed. The Post Office Department bucked the question on to Postmaster Pafford.
Last month, Postmaster Pafford sat down and wrote the department. He was still against installing the panels, he said firmly. One, called Wheat Fields, bore no resemblance to any wheat field around Salina, or anywhere else, he thought. A second was a mill scene, with the name of one of Salina's millers on it ("What would our other millers think of that?"). Another showed a mission scene, but Salina ("We're all Christians here") had never, been a mission center as far as the postmaster knew. Still another panel showed Spanish Conquistador Francisco Vasquez de Coronado. Said Pafford: "If they [the artists] had pictured Coronado with his army, for instance, it would have meant something . . . These pictures look like nothing." Furthermore, Pafford argued, Salina had the most beautiful post office in the state; he was not going to have it ruined with pictures of "privies and funny-looking women."
These critical notes and a few newspaper stories on the row gave Ernest Dewey, president of the library board in nearby Hutchinson (pop. 31,000) a bright idea: If Salina didn't want them, why not install the murals in the proposed new $250,000 Hutchinson library? Salina's Pafford was delighted. "If those Cow Creek yokels don't know any more about art than to want these murals," he crowed, "they should have them." Artist Black in New York seemed pleased at the news that the crate might be opened at last.
Last week, Library Chairman Dewey announced that while the Post Office Department was mulling over his proposition, the murals will be exhibited in Hutchinson next month. Furthermore, Postmaster Pafford will be invited over to make a speech on mural painting, if he cares to come. There seemed no doubt that other people would come. Said one Hutchinson citizen: "If the Government did it, it ain't art, but I want to see it anyway."